I take a deep breath as I sit here at my usual usual trying to collect my thoughts and trying to figure out how to write this post. There’s a lot on my mind as of late. There are the server issues that this website is hosted on. It’s down. There are the changes that my one and only good friend here in Los Angeles is picking up and moving home on Sunday morning. And there’s the other thought that I just turned a new number.

I’m 34, 34, 34, 34. It’s that time again for the yearly ramblings of what being a new number means. I’m another year older, another year wiser. Another year.

I know I say this time and time again, but it is so true. Time flies. It figuratively coasts through everything that we do our lives and just disappears as it ticks away. Our life is just a bitch to time. We are bitches to time.

I’m 34.

* * *

What can I say about being 33? It was definitely a difficult age for me. I took a gander at something that I wrote last year during this time, an article that I linked to saying that 33 is the best age for men.

Looking back at how my year was, it wasn’t. It was a year of constant wondering what is happening with me. I touched upon it that it was my year of a mid-life crisis. It definitely was. There was something definitely wrong with me last year.

My body felt weird. My mind felt weird. I couldn’t focus on anything or get myself motivated to do anything at all. I was a bitch to this blahness that was me. A bitch bitch. I don’t like being a bitch.

I would like to think that things got better as the year ended and even in the last few months. I was able to focus and to write and to do some things, but there were times where I wasn’t able to and I still haven’t figured out why.

It wasn’t a total lost at least. There were some moments of being 33 that I can look back on and think, hey, I’m doing good. I’m happy. Everything is going to be all right. I feel normal. And there was moments like that. There were moments of brilliance and great ideas.

Moments of clarity in my writing. There were moments of discovery in my photography. There were just moments of feeling like a normal human being in my socialness. They were just in constant battle of the blaseness of this mid-life.

It wasn’t until last night when a cousin of mine posted something about gluten-sensitivity. Looking at the symptoms, I think I may have it! But then again, I am a hypochondriac, but it fits so well.

33.

It definitely was a year of trying and another year of finding my footing again. It was definitely a year of struggling to feel normal and getting ready for a big change. It was a year in transition. My year in transition.

* * *

There are a lot of things that are shaken up in my life right now. Many things that are beyond my control.

The Carters leaving. Work going the route that it is going and just the dynamics changing and drama at work. Many things just out of my control.

33.

It definitely was a year of itching and fighting the comfortable and getting ready for the change. In a way, many of these changes are a welcome change, to get me out of this rut that I am in.

Maybe with the Carters leaving, I actually do need to make an effort to make new friends. I’m better at socializing, so, in a way that’s a growing experience that has improved.

I am learning new skills that will be beneficial for me at work. Maybe I can just find something else and with the company losing the business, maybe it is just the ungentle push that I need to get the fuck out.

As I told Blair when I first got hired that I’ll give him 5 years, ’cause that was what I told my mom when I got this job about the possibility of me moving home. I told her to ask me again in 5 years and I’ll see how I feel.

33.

Changes.

Decisions.

Maybe it is a year of me bracing for the decisions that I need to make to propel me into the next phase in my life, whatever that maybe.

Maybe I just need to man up and meet new people and maybe get in a relationship? Maybe it is just me realizing that me pining away over Ms. D is a lost cause and I just need to MOVE THE FUCK ON.

Move the fuck on.

I can’t read her at all, when I can pick up on these other things with other people. With her, she’s a black hole of information. Nothing but questions.

Changes. Moving on.

* * *

Changes. Moving on.

New day, new motivation to write.

33.

Looking back, it didn’t seem like it was any different than any other age of my 30s. I socialized when I wanted to socialized. I picked up and left for vacation whenever I needed to go away. I took my yearly pilgrimage home and spent time with family, bonding more with my little cousins more than I ever had.

Looking back, it really wasn’t much different than any other year.

It just was a different feeling in terms of feeling. That feeling of being lost was rearing its ugly head. I call it my mid-life and in a way it is.

I just feel like I’m at a crossroads. I need to make changes in my life. There are things that I want in life that I’m no closer to actually achieving.

Having a family. Maybe possibly being with someone. I need to make a start relatively soon. I’m not getting any younger.

* * *

As much as I fear that there is going to be a point of no return in the way that I’ll be too old to get into anything, too old to be in a relationship or too old to start a family; there’s a large part of me that isn’t scared. There’s that optimism again.

It has stuck with me for a while now. It showed up unexpectedly out of the blue one day many years ago and it has never left. I wonder if it had always been in me. That I’ve always had it, but I never trusted it. I don’t know, but it’s a live and breathing.

No fear. I’m too fast too furious. I live my life a quarter mile at a time. That’s how someone described me when they see how I’m dealing with my whole work’s situation.

I’m whatever about it, no matter what happens.

I don’t know whether it is my optimism that things will always work out for me, or if it was something that I had learned and picked up through my years to not sweat the stuff that I have no control over.

If I lose my job, I lose my job. I can always find another. Many are worried and shitting bricks, but I don’t know, it is something that I’m not worried about.

I guess I had always been the type of person that just takes whatever comes my way and make the best of it. I’ve always been the type that sits and waits and figure things out. If there are times that I feel a need for a change, I’ll take action to make that change.

But then again, there are times when I feel the push for the change and I just wait and sit and sit until that urge goes away. But I think for the most part, with those, I just don’t have a clear understanding of what I want.

It isn’t’ until I understand what it is that I want that I’ll act. And unfortunately I’m the person that won’t know until he knows.

* * *

33.

A transitional year. A year of finding and understanding.

Changes.

Did I grow in the past year?

I know that I want to grow and better myself as a person every year. I want to learn something new about myself or just better myself and work on a fault of mine every year. Did I do that?

I don’t’ know.

I think I’m a little more social then I have ever been. Grant it I don’t think I’ve gone out as much as I had in other years, but I’ve always been the type of person that goes out with certain people. I have made new friends and manage to hang out with some people more than I ever had.

Maybe that is progress. I’m not afraid to just ask someone to hang out. Maybe this year will be different, piggy backing off of that. Maybe things will change on the social front. Who knows?

I know I need something. I know I need something more than this comfortable existence that I have made and chose for myself. It’s been a long long time coming and I think it just might be the time, the year for me to make that change.

34 will be the year of making decisions. It’ll be the year of big changes. It’ll be a year of new.

* * *

Maybe it is just that I need a new challenge.

Life has gotten comfortable. It has gotten predictable in terms of what I do. I go to work. I’ll go socialize from time to time, but I’ll go to work, come home and just relax. Nothing changes.

I don’t meet new people, ’cause I don’t really give myself an avenue to meet new people. I don’t like to socialize in crowds and there are quite a few people that I find it hard to talk with. Searching for things to talk about is like torture whereas there are others that conversation flows without any stress.

Should I throw myself in these challenging situations to see if I can navigate my way through it? Should I treat it as a game? Maybe I should look at things in a different way.

Maybe instead of looking at these social gathers, whenever I get a chance to go, as a chore of uncomfortableness, I should look at it as a game of people watching and as a social experiment or social observation.

Just go and people watch. Maybe I’ll meet new people. Maybe I’ll meet new friends. Maybe it is all just for the experience of life.

I don’t know. I just need a challenge.

34.

It seems like it’ll be a year of mystery. I genuinely have no idea what is in store for me.

* * *

Rumblings and ramblings.

I have lost my thought and any cohesion in this post a long time ago. Like many posts nowadays, it has lost its purpose.

I just type and type hoping that something good comes out of it. I just hope that my intentions come out in these posts. I just hope that in a way it captures how I feel.

I guess it succeeded in that 33 does feel like this post. Wandering and questioning, not sure of what it is. Thematic bursts of coherency litter the post like it did my life.

Change. Change. Change.

I’m another year older, another year wiser…just a little dazed and confused this time around.

I’m 34. 34. 34. 34.

Like any new number, I don’t know what it’ll bring me. I just hope that it is something interesting and worth going through.

So, 33, I bid you adieu.

34. Bring it.